“Forget it. We’ll open it some other way.”
The daughter-in-law went over to the other room and recounted the conversation to her mother-in-law. The old woman was furious. “That’s ridiculous! He’s making up stories to steal the key to the main safe — he knows it’s on the same key ring.”
She flung the door open. The daughter-in-law feared that there was going to be a scene and stayed put. She could hear the ruckus in the main room and the thump of the iron safe landing on the veranda.
Deok-gi’s wife could hear her mother-in-law bawling, “Do you want to see us kicked out on the street with a beggar’s bowl in our hands? Why are you here, making a fuss about small and big keys? You’re like a burglar in broad daylight! You might as well carry the safe away on your back. You put your son in that miserable place just to try to get your hands on it! You’re the one who should be locked up!”
Without replying, Sang-hun came out with his hat in hand. He told his daughter-in-law, “I wash my hands of it. Let the inspectors come for it themselves.”
Deok-hui arrived home from school shortly after he left. When she saw the disarray and everyone standing around unsure of what to do next, she flinched, imagining the scene that she must have just missed. Moments before, when she stepped off the streetcar, she caught sight of her father in the distance, but his eyes darted away from hers, and he walked off briskly. His indifference hurt her, and she turned around several times to watch him go.
At school and when she visited her friends’ houses, she talked freely and laughed as other girls did, but once in her own home, she felt stifled, as if something heavy weighed her down. She wanted to remove herself from all of them. It was enough to make her not want to come home.
Deok-hui didn’t get along very well with her mother, and even less so with her father. It frustrated her that her mother didn’t seem to care what was going on at school, and her constant complaints and frequent outbursts drove her to despair. She felt close to only one person in her family, her brother; he took the trouble to try to understand her. They were close in age, and he treated her with affection. But now he was in jail.
“Was Father here?” Deok-hui asked her sister-in-law. “What’s the matter? Did they fight?”
“No. He came to get the key to the safe.”
“My father’s pathetic,” Deok-hui sighed. “Deok-gi is in real trouble, but he can’t stop thinking about the safe. He’s losing his mind — he must be senile,” Deok-hui said under her breath as she entered her study room.
“Senile? How can he be senile when he’s not even fifty?” The mother resumed her harangue, sitting on the edge of the veranda. “He’s an overgrown child. You’d think he’s a man in his twenties by the way he falls over women.”
Deok-hui shut the door to her room. Other parents are not like this. Why do mine have to be so infuriating? Deok-hui envied her friend whose family ran a grocery. Both brother and sister lamented their lot of being born into a rich family.
As they were about to sit down for dinner, the old man watching the outer quarters in lieu of Secretary Ji came in, followed by Sang-hun, and two men clad in Western suits. There was no need to ask who they were.
“Where is it?” The detective was impatient.
Sang-hun scrambled up to the veranda and opened the door to the main room, obedient as a puppy. The detectives went in, saying that they would allow the inhabitant of the room to be present. Deok-gi’s wife stood closely behind her father-in-law. Her mother-in-law, Deok-hui, and the helpers stood on the veranda in mortified silence.
The detectives opened all the wardrobe doors, ransacked the desk drawers, opened the bookcase, and quickly searched the loft. Then, they took out the steel box, which had been returned to its place, and attempted to open it.
“We don’t have the key,” the daughter-in-law spoke up to discourage them.
“They got it from your husband,” her father-in-law whispered.
“We’ve got the key, don’t you get it?” the older detective growled, pointing to the younger man, who inserted the key, while entering the combination. The safe clanged open. The gruff detective found the ring of keys, and asked Sang-hun, “Is this the right one?”
“Yes, yes.”
Sang-hun’s wife, standing on the veranda, was unable to understand why her husband was so ill at ease and submissive before the younger man.
They tramped out to the outer quarters. Sang-hun’s wife and daughter-in-law followed. “Are they really detectives?” Sang-hun’s wife asked the keeper of the outer quarters.
He answered dismissively, “Don’t you see how the master is being dragged around? I’ve got their card right here.”
Why should she doubt them when it was all to get her son home? The two women stood on the stone ledge, peering into the room flooded with electric light. The detectives opened the cabinet first, then the main safe, shutting it securely before coming out to the veranda.
“What are you doing out here? Go inside,” Sang-hun scolded the women.
“What happened?” the daughter-in-law asked, knowing that her mother-in-law wouldn’t want to talk to him.
“Well, he’ll be out by tomorrow, I think. Don’t worry. Go on inside.” As he took his leave, surrounded by the detectives, he told a young servant to secure the gates of the house.
“Master, are you going straight home?”
“Yes. Let’s get a taxi.”
The three flagged down a taxi when they reached Hwanggeumjeong.
“We’ll disappear this evening. You should pay us now.”
“Relax. You’ll get paid when we get there.”
“If things go wrong, we’ll land in prison for three years — maybe even five or six. A thousand is nothing. We should get enough so that our family doesn’t go hungry for however long we’re on the run.”
The other one agreed. “Don’t worry. It’s gone so well that I’m sure the master will give us an ample reward.”
“You won’t be sorry if you give us a big one each.”
“Why are you guys so impatient? Wait a minute — ” Sang-hun was alarmed.
“What?”
“The detective’s card you gave to the keeper. We left it somewhere on the cabinet. What a stupid mistake!”
They had acquired the card from the detective who had taken in Clerk Choe. Sang-hun had insisted that it’d be better if they didn’t use it, unless it were absolutely necessary.
“There’s no need for you to worry. Our necks are on the line here.”
“But that card can cause serious problems. It’s like using a stolen official seal or a forged document.”
“If you’re so worried, we’ll go snatch it back. How much is it worth to you?”
“You sound like a broken record. I’ll give you as much as you want. Just get it back.”
“How much?”
“How will you get it back?”
“Don’t you worry about that. Just tell us how much.”
“I’ll give you a hundred won.”
“That’s it? If something goes wrong, it could cost a person’s life.”
“You’re crazy! I’ll give you a hundred, that’s all.”
“Put it in writing.”
“A note?”
“No, a check.”
“All right. Wait! You took the card back and put it in your pocket, didn’t you?”
“Write the check, then hand over the rest of our money.”
“I can’t. I don’t have that much cash with me.”
Sang-hun wrote a check in the taxi parked in the front of his gate. The older man chuckled as he snapped up the check with one hand and brought out the card from his coat pocket with the other.